


soliloquy

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [355]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angband, Angst, Claustrophobia, Gen, Gold Rush AU, Mithrim, Self-Esteem Issues, Sleep Deprivation, implied/references torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:07:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29825382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Maedhros was comfortably drowsy himself, but his thoughts were beginning to wake up, and he tried to heed his own mind whenever there was the luxury of peace and silence to attend to it.Or, four times Maedhros did a little thinking during the solitude of night, and one time he couldn't.
Relationships: Celegorm | Turcafinwë & Maedhros | Maitimo, Gwindor & Maedhros | Maitimo, Maedhros | Maitimo & Maglor | Makalaurë, Maedhros | Maitimo & Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor, Maedhros | Maitimo & Original Character(s)
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [355]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11





	soliloquy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mythopoeia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythopoeia/gifts).



> Happy Birthday to co-author Mythopoeia! (2 days late)

I

All was quiet. Maedhros opened his eyes to the honey-glow of the table lamp, the only one left burning. A wide-bowled oil lamp, the best to be had in 1848—so the merchant had said—could burn for eight hours straight, before the wick needed servicing. Maedhros kept this sort of useful fact in his head because he was presently the master of Valinor Park.

That, and Maglor preferred to risk his life for the poetry of dripping candles.

 _Anyway,_ Maglor liked to say, tossing his head uncaringly, _You will always be there to snuff the candles for me, Maitimo._

At the moment, Maglor’s feet were tucked in Maedhros’ lap. His fur-lined slippers had been cast off on the cool space of floor between the sofa’s claw legs, which Sally never let collect dust. They’d fallen asleep in the sitting room, stretched out among the cushions, and contentment blossomed in Maedhros’ breast at the realization that it was now past midnight by the mantel clock.

Nights such as these were precious. There was no need to face the loneliness of a solitary room.

Maglor was ticklish about his ankles, so Maedhros took particular care in lifting them up and away. He was comfortably drowsy himself, but his thoughts were beginning to wake up, and he tried to heed his own mind whenever there was the luxury of peace and silence to attend to it.

Wrapping his dressing-gown around himself, and belting it, he paced to the window. His own feet were bare, as was his preference, and they made no sound on the stout floor-boards of his father’s house.

Yes, alone at night, he thought of his father. Feanor inhabited this house as if he himself was always just out of sight.

 _You must decide upon a course,_ Athair said gravely, in Maedhros’ mind. _A course, for how you shall speak to me._

Time was flowing river-swift, however much the mantel clock ticked steadily. Already, it was more than a year since Maedhros had met Esther Landau at one of Finrod’s dry, intellectual soirees. Already it was many months since they had first kissed, since they had pledged their troth.

Maedhros drew the baize curtain back with two fingers: just enough to see rain falling in the street, sizzling on the glass of the nearest lamp. It would be too easy to while away the midnight hour with thoughts of her soft skin and dark eyes, her gentle teasing. He must hold himself to something higher than that.

 _You cannot lead her on forever_ , he told himself, trying to be stern. _You must decide whether or not to marry her—_

Not _marry her? That would be dastardly._

His own horror chagrinned him. It was foolish to cling to such noble outrage, when in fact, he was bitter with the wisdom of age. He was twenty years old, not a child any longer, and he could no longer pretend that he operated according to absolutes. If he did not prepare properly for an interview with his father, his best plans would fail.

Feanor was not easily convinced of anything, especially when faced with the prospect of an expanded understanding of _family_.

 _Who are her people?_ Maedhros could imagine him saying. _What sort of company does she keep?_

His father did not hold truck with the mistreatment of Jews, any more than he did with mistreatment of the Irish. Yet it was another matter entirely for his Catholic son to _marry_ a Jew. Maedhros expected the ultimate question to be posed, and had not yet decided how he should answer it.

_And when shall she be catechized and baptized?_

He sighed.

_Athair, what if I were to tell you that I would not ask that of her? That I would not demand she change her soul, for me?_

“You know very well what he will say to that,” Maedhros murmured, to the silver sliver of his reflection in the window. “He will storm at you, and perhaps even box your ears, which has not ever been his wont. He will be hurt. Ach, that’s the worst of it, isn’t it? Athair will be hurt.”

Another thought, one which he dared not speak aloud:

_Is Athair’s hurt your guide? Can he never grow beyond it, for all that he expects you to grow beyond your fears?_

Maedhros let the curtain fall. Then he turned, shivering, and tiptoed back to the sofa. Maglor was snoring with his mouth open. Maedhros shook free one of the quilts that they had brought to the sitting room for warmth by the fire, and draped it over his brother. Then he himself lay down upon the woven rug spread out before the clawfoot legs, thrust his toes into his brother’s too-small slippers, and fell asleep with his head on his arm.

II

It had rained very hard all day, and Athair, in a foul mood, had conceded that there should be no raid tonight. Maedhros concealed his giddy relief at the news as best he could, and busied himself with helping Crowley and Edwards and Celegorm haul wide-mouthed barrels out to the kitchen yard.

Rain was a gift, in California. It quenched fires made by man and God alike.

“Your father would be wise to think of high winds, too, more often than he does,” Edwards told Maedhros, as they struggled and slipped on the muddy ground. “Last thing we need is for the forest and bush to burn, all on account of the damn railroad.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Maedhros said, ashamed to think of Athair’s judgment being perceived poorly. They had only been two months in Mithrim. But it was true, of course, that Athair tended to dismiss such warnings; he said that a little destruction was the only way to make a dent in the iron sides of bureaucracy.

The former farmers and tradesmen of Mithrim did not talk much of “bureaucracy.” Rumil only sighed.

“Athair really is going to get us all killed,” Celegorm grumbled, shaking the water out of his hair like a discontented dog. His own dog, smelling very strongly of his kind but not particularly discontented, was beside him.

So Celegorm had overheard.

“Not tonight at least,” Maedhros answered, low, but that immediately felt like a betrayal on his part. Sure enough, Celegorm grinned as if to say, _Athair’s a fool, isn’t he?_ , expecting Maedhros to readily agree.

Instead, Maedhros said, “I’m going to change my shirt. You should, too.”

In dry clothes, they shared supper with Jem and Galway and Ulfang. Maglor was nowhere to be seen, and Athair was speaking with Rumil. The twins and Caranthir were already done eating and had huddled by the fireside, crouched so that they blurred into their child-selves again before Maedhros’ very eyes.

“So you’ve washed your hair at last,” said Jem to Celegorm, who glared at her through his damp tangles without too much real venom.

“ _You’ve_ precious little hair, for a woman,” he retorted, throwing Huan one of his scraps. Ulfang laughed at this. Maedhros recalled that Galway believed Ulfang was wooing Jem. Galway had hinted as much to Maedhros, not admitting his reasons for looking sorry over it.

Maedhros didn’t think Jem was any object of Ulfang’s, and had said so at the time, also hinting. If anything, he sometimes felt that Ulfang’s eyes lighted on _him_ in an unusual manner. But one didn’t go around accusing other men of that unless the object was bloodshed.

No matter. He was used to odd stares.

He offered up jokes that he wouldn’t remember in half an hour and ate his dinner quickly, made comfortable by Celegorm’s solid shoulder, which was pressed against his on the crowded bench. Celegorm was only here because Maedhros was. Celegorm didn’t dislike Jem, but he never chose company outside his own family unless he had to.

How had that happened?

When supper was finished, the men and women played cards. Maedhros slipped away before anybody could request a hand with him.

There was one small window in the room he shared with his brothers, and through it, he saw the moon. She glided through the clouds like a waterbird parting the invisible currents of a lake.

That was a boon of Mithrim, not unlike to Formenos: both moon and stars could be seen shining overhead. The two were painfully distant elsewise.

He unrolled his bedding, wondering if he would be much missed if he did not return to the hall until morning. Athair hadn’t asked for him; had scarcely said a word to him all day. Perhaps Athair had sensed that Maedhros was not unhappy about the rain.

Accepting this defeat, he took off his boots and stretched out atop the woolen blanket. His quilt was in tatters; he used the remnants for a pillow now, rather than a coverlet. No doubt it would soon become too much a rag for any use at all.

The thought rose a lump in his throat. Other thoughts followed it. They all sprang from the same origin: wrongdoing. Betrayals that belonged to him, and times he had _been_ betrayed. The question, as ever, of whether he could hold himself wronged when he had been merely too tired or too stupid or too lust-driven to fight, to flee.

Lying here, with one elbow grazing the cold stones of the wall and his fingers interlaced behind his head, he reasoned that Athair would settle with time. That he would live a life as he had before Grandfather died; keeping up a keen interest in the doings of his enemies, but not being _consumed_ by that interest. The railroad would likely be built to completion, but there was a great deal of land here to be explored and developed. They would never again feel the same crushing influence of—of the same black-hearted bureaucrats whom Athair had sought to escape in the east.

_Christ, that’s a web of fairy stories._

Maedhros grimaced in the invisible dark. Sometimes he trapped himself in a cell as narrow and plain as this room, trying to make a scene to live by, an oath to trust.

In short, he always needed something to believe in. People were difficult to understand in that way; it might be why he was such a failure at understanding himself.

 _You’re in pieces_. There were half a dozen children, all of whom he’d been, and then all the city-selves, who would never have been friendly or even acquainted if they had truly been scattered amongst different people. Now there was a murderer who was tired of playing cards and wanted to press his cheek against the scraps of a quilt his mother had made for him. 

Somewhere buried beneath all of him, down in the ground where dead things were, was _potential._

“Christ,” he muttered. “That’s a terror.”

III

The cot in the infirmary was not, strictly, a resting place. It had been designed for a doctor’s use. Long bands of leather were nailed beneath it, so that they could bind an invalid for surgery at the chest, waist, and knees.

An invalid; not a prisoner. For a prisoner, such as Maedhros, more precautions were taken. A set of shackles, linked by lengths of chain, had been added for _his_ restraint. Were he to teach another his plight, it would be a tiresome business to explain, but he had had a good deal of time to think over it, and he understood that the shackles were dually useful: if the chains were threaded through at the front of the body, the collar round the throat would be linked to the wrists, and the wrists to the ankles. This jingling surplice would allow for hobbling movement.

But to hobble to and from this room had been a luxury. He knew that now. For a prisoner _confined_ , and not allowed any freedom of movement, the leather bands were fastened and the shackles closed and locked. _Then_ , the chains passed behind the body and the frame of the cot itself, so that the head, arms, and feet could not move more than an inch or so in any direction.

This was how Maedhros had first been bound, so that he could not hurt himself upon waking from a drugged slumber, and this was how he was bound now, when he was learning that all luxuries of captivity were denied to him.

It was his second night, like this.

He had taken the draughts Father Clement offered him, at first, so that he might sleep away some of the hours, but after a while he refused them once more. Each waking was so horrid, bringing with it waves of fright and panic, and more than that, he needed to think.

If there was anything that he could offer Morgoth, that he had not already—

But that was shameful. Less than two days, spent thus, and he was already digging through the filth of his own defeats, trying to find more pride and honour to ruin.

_You must be calm._

It was his own voice that told him this; he had given up listening to anybody else’s after the second fleet of troubled dreams. He had been immobile, there, too, but not by virtue of leather and iron.

There, the weight of another body had held him down.

He shuddered at the memory, and the chains rattled. The collar was the worst of it: it was so unforgiving against his throat, and the edges were cold and hard. Whenever he fidgeted, it bit his flesh, and he wept.

Sometimes silently, sometimes not. He would have to learn to control that, too, if this was—if this was to go on.

Father Clement was asleep, huddled in a corner. Maedhros could not sleep. He was very hungry, but it was impossible to feed him much. Moreover, the prospect of being sick, like this, was terrifying. He had had some water, though, and had soiled himself some time ago. Father Clement was doing his best about that sort of thing, during the day, but Maedhros would not wake him like a child still in need of a wetnurse. Not for the world.

_You have a little pride left, then._

He blinked in the dark. Curled his fingers against his palms. If Morgoth knew that he could still do _that_ , he’d make shackles for his fingers, too.

Or maybe not. Maybe Morgoth knew full well that he had done enough; enough to make death very long and slow.

To waste away like this—

And Father Clement, living martyr that he was, would never kill him outright.

The tears were coming again. They trickled down his temples. He should try to occupy himself with breathing as deep into his lungs as possible, but his ribs were still very painful and the band around his chest had been drawn tight.

He could not use his body for anything. He had only to decide if what was left in mind or spirit could do him any service.

 _You’ve only two choices before you. Convince_ him _to let you go, or—_

_Very good, you. Better think of the other choice, fast-like._

_The other choice is death. No whingeing. No dragging it out. No more scraps of food—no more water._

His throat bobbed and jerked against the collar as he swallowed. If only death was a door to walk through, to be shut firmly behind. Even before Morgoth touched and changed him, before Morgoth _let_ him be touched and changed, he was as dead to Mithrim as Mithrim was to the journey west. As the city dandy was to the quiet farm-boy, running and running on sunburnt legs.

Maedhros was just a body now, and a body forever in pain. His ribs; his brands; his scabbed stripes from hips to neck; his shackle-burned limbs. All suspended, as he was suspended, but crashing back down like a wave when he remembered, or tried to move.

A body, useless; a mind, still sane. He must turn his attention to changing Father Clement’s mind about death—but only by an inch or so.

_Let me go, Father. Do not keep me here against my will._

That would be his last prayer.

He flexed his fingers, his bruised feet. He was cold, and damp, and the tender brands especially itched dreadfully under his bandages.

In the dark, breathing fitfully, he must not forget that the most dangerous want was the first choice. That was a door that opened and shut; the one to the windowed room upstairs. He had done unspeakable things in that room, which was to say, he had spoken. He had gutted himself like a fish and let Morgoth pick through the innards, finding some family delicacy therein.

Would he beg to return?

Thankfully, that choice was not now before him. 

IV

Belle had chided Gwindor about letting Russandol sleep on his back. _It hurts him more, you know_ , she said, and Gwindor said, _Yes, I remember, but the lad swears he prefers it_.

The reason, as it pertained to Russandol, was his ribs. Belle and Gwindor had seen them, of course—everybody had. But nobody knew what had made them so tender, so misshapen. Nobody had seen the hot iron striking again and again. When Russandol remembered that he should be grateful for anything, he was grateful for the failure of his body and mind to endure _that_ pain waking. As such, he’d scarcely seen it himself. At any rate, he now wished to refrain from reminding Gwindor that his kicks and blows had worsened the matter.

And it wasn’t so bad, on his back. With Gwindor’s help, Russandol eased his shoulders up and down, and though the torn and swollen flesh beneath the bandages throbbed, it was…bearable.

So much for Russandol. The reason pertaining to _Maedhros_ —there was a different matter entirely, and it had nothing to do with choosing between pressure on raw lash-wounds or deep-bruised ribs. Maedhros had never liked to sleep on his stomach. He hated how it stifled his breathing, how it twisted his neck.

Maedhros preferred comfort.

Upon reflection, it was strange that his body still aped old patterns, when comfort itself was impossible. But Russandol, who had overtaken Maedhros entirely, renounced his habit as soon as he overheard Belle and Gwindor’s muttered exchange. He weighed his choices in his usual silence, and then told them that he would let himself be turned, tonight, since they thought it wise.

In the slumbering barracks, now, he was regretting this.

He could not breathe.

He drew his right hand up from where it hung by the side of poor Haldar’s cot, and propped his chin on it. He did not trust himself to move without causing a ruckus and tearing the fresh scabs. The whole of his back was board-stiff; the tattered, sunburnt skin pulled tight where it was not slashed and sticky with drying blood. There were other pains, too: pains that never went away. Beyond the whipping, the sun-sickness, the old torments, the tenderness of his mouth, he was bruised and aching from his rounds with the other slaves. His leg in particular troubled him. It would have to be favored from some time, after he got up.

Russandol breathed through his nose. If he reached for recent memories, there were some that could make his current predicament less vexing by comparison. He would never forget the shackles, of course, not for a night, but nor did he wish to think on them intently, either. Instead, he tried to reckon whether he had regained his head sooner after the first flogging or the second.

To be sure, he had had more skin and flesh intact—more _beauty_ , if you would—when Mairon whipped him. But he had been desolate on that very account; hungry and thirsty and _shocked_ , unable to countenance the little losses of pride and humanity.

Russandol scorned that sorry Maedhros, and forced his thoughts along. Russandol was quite used to being a slave. Suited for it, even, or so he’d seemed before his futile defense, and the punishment that followed.

But maybe the best slave _was_ naturally suited for the torment of the post. There was no denying that Gothmog had taken much satisfaction in having a sound reason for beating him.

Gothmog needed more reason than Morgoth did, but it was Morgoth who had kept him alive.

_He will want repayment, for that._

_I have nothing to give._

He cupped his chin in his hand, now, pressing his fingers against his dry lips. He knew that Morgoth had come to him when he was still too feverish to recollect; Gwindor had said so.

Russandol had called a little upon Maedhros, and told Gwindor that what was written in flesh was not wholly the truth.

It had mattered, in that moment, but it didn’t seem to matter so much in the dark.

Russandol chanced a glance at Gwindor, stretched out on the cot adjacent to his own. Gwindor was a good man, living a hard life. He wasn’t being punished; he was being mistreated. You could see the distinction in his eyes.

Russandol was being punished, and he would endure it as long as his body could, but Maedhros was less tractable. Maedhros, having been a coward and a philanderer and a murderer, would not be killed, and would not be permitted to die. He still lived like an unquenchable ember in Russandol’s penitent heart.

A hateful, haunted, bloody-handed boy—but a boy who had brothers.

A boy who would have to face the man at the door again, since death would not offer him a way out.

He dragged in another breath, knowing he could not sleep like this even if the pain would subside. He told himself again—told both Russandol and Maedhros—that Morgoth would demand a price.

 _You will have to decide on what you can give him_ , said Maedhros to Russandol.

_If you are going to earn your death, you are going to have to fight._

V

Yours is a good, small life. Yours is a full belly, and a mother, and a yard in which to run, long and green by the white-painted fence. You are all alone, but she is returning soon, and you will wait for her in the sunshine.

Every day is the same. You are content; your name is Maedhros. You are thoughtful, worrying over the sound of her footsteps; your name is Maitimo.

You are sorry for the little hound dog, which always bleeds when it is beaten, and which is always beaten when it eats. Everything is the color of summer in this place—everything is throbbing with the sounds of the brook and the barnyard. Why punish a dog that does not so much as howl?

Why—the—dog—

Why—howl—

All is hot, all is cold, all is yellow and black and grey and gone. A clean line divides you from the song of your unanswerable pains.

Someone steps over that line.

(Yours is a good, small death.)

All was quiet, and your body was a mystery.

Then the blood spurts forth where your hand begins. 


End file.
